


blackmail material (or, a picture for tony's office)

by KiwisAndTea



Series: t-shirts [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst, Dialogue Heavy, Fluff, Tony Stark Has A Heart, but like only a little, successful co-parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-15 13:16:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16933920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KiwisAndTea/pseuds/KiwisAndTea
Summary: May Parker (4:43):guess whos sporting a new iron man shirtIn which May is a tease and Tony just wants to see these mythical shirts, but he gets more than he bargained for.





	blackmail material (or, a picture for tony's office)

**Author's Note:**

> To celebrate my freedom from school, I give you... literally anything that is not the multi-chapter I started. Sorry.
> 
> This is the beginning of a Peter's (and Tony's) wonderful t-shirts-centric series, although this one is technically t-shirt-adjacent. Shh. It's a nice jumping off point for the others. Besides, after the Avengers 4 trailer I think we all need something nice, like successful co-parenting and sleepy Peter.

He's in the middle of what is essentially an advanced game of _Operation_ with his Iron Man armor when FRIDAY alerts him to a text message from one May Parker. They've been keeping in contact a lot more since their miscommunication caused the Incident, but it doesn't stop him from worrying that the kid has done something Tony has probably explicitly told him not to do. Unfortunately, he's wrist-deep in some sensitive material and has no choice but to finish what he started. One text can wait. If they start pouring in or she calls, he'll risk the damage to his systems.

By the time he's done, he had almost forgotten about it.

 

 

 **May Parker** (4:43): _guess whos sporting a new iron_

_man shirt_

 

 

If there's a stupid smile on his face when he reads the message, FRIDAY knows better than to call him out on it.

(He'd fixed that programming about three weeks into his new career as a mentor).

 

 

 **Tony** (8:11) **:** _I'm going to save myself the disappointment_

_of hoping it's you and say the kid_

 

 **May Parker** (8:20): _ding ding ding!!_

 

 

Making his way up to the kitchen for fresh coffee, Tony waits for more, but it never comes.

 

 

 **Tony** (8:26): _don't leave me hanging. Where's my picture?_

 **Tony** (8:26): _I know he's got a dozen of them, but I've never_

_seen one. I'm beginning to think they're just a myth_

 

 **May Parker** (8:29): _srry, hes hiding in his room._

_prob in pjs now_

 

 **Tony** (8:32): _tease_

 

 

Pepper comes home not long after the last text and distracts him with SI work for over two hours, badgering him into signing a stack of contracts thicker than all of his dissertations combined over a quick pasta meal and, for her, two glasses of wine. She raises an eyebrow at him when his phone buzzes on the table between them for the third time in less than five minutes.

"Who's texting you this late at night?"

Flexing his stiff hand, Tony glances at the screen, swiping away far too many notifications before identifying the answer to her question. "May," he tells her, unlocking the screen with piqued curiosity.

 

 

 **May Parker** (11:09): _ill make it up to u_

 **May Parker** (11:12): [image]

 **May Parker** (11:13): _forgiven?_

 

 

"What?"

Rather than attempting to describe something as adorable as Peter wrapped up tight in a gray fleece blanket covered in an Iron Man print, clearly asleep in his aunt's lap on the couch, Tony turns the phone towards his fiancée. One look and she's wearing a smile as besotted as his own.

 

 

 **Tony** (11:15): _yes_

 **Tony** (11:16): _why would you let something that innocent look_

_up to me?_

 

 

He doesn't mean it in an entirely self-depreciating way, but some days it completely baffles him how the kindest, smartest, most generous and compassionate kid on the planet could idolize _him_ and still be perfect. It's pictures like that, he thinks as he makes the photo his home screen background, that make him feel unworthy.

 

 

 **May Parker** (11:19): _trust me we tried to stop him_

 **May Parker** (11:20): _but aftr the expo we accepted it as_

_a lost cause_

 

 

Pepper collects their work and bids him goodnight with a warning tone he knows means he should follow, but he can't just leave this for later.

 

 

 **Tony** (11:20): _what expo??_

 

 **May Parker** (11:21): _stark expo. 2010._

 

 

He absolutely cannot leave this for later. She picks up on the first ring. "Tell me you weren't."

"I wasn't," May answers, hushed. If he strains, he can hear the TV on in the background and can imagine her combing her fingers through Peter's hair to keep from waking him. "But Ben took Peter."

Despite knowing exactly where that line of questioning would end, it still hurts to hear and the scar in his chest aches at the thought. Of course Peter was there, where else would he be but in the middle of danger?  "Is he okay?"

"You've seen him. He's fine."

 _It isn't enough_ he wants to scream, but she doesn't deserve that and he doesn't want to wake the kid. "I've only seen him after the spider bite fixed all his problems. Was he hurt?" Did Tony ruin him before they even met? Has he failed that kid from the start?

Her laugh is only a soundless breath of air creating static over the line, but it shocks him to his core. "I think he was the only person there that day that _wasn't_ hurt one way or another. Somehow it made him stronger, braver," she says, her voice no longer hushed, but _soft_. Gentle. Loving. Kind. "He wasn't so afraid of the world after that."

At a loss for words, all Tony can croak out is a measly, "How?"

"Beats me. I would have thought almost getting killed by a robot would have pushed him towards unhealthy coping mechanisms, not bring him out of his shell."

" _What?_ "

There is no way in hell his heart is strong enough to have this conversation, but he's in too deep to back out now. Peter was at the Disaster Expo, almost got himself killed, and yet survived changed for the better? That kid has never been more of a conundrum.

"Stupid boy," she whispers, but he knows _that_ tone. That venom is all for herself. "Ben said he ran off when it started, told him Iron Man would save the day." It's not new guilt, but it's a lot heavier than it used to be, weighed down by Peter's unwavering faith in him. "He was small for his age, and in the chaos, Ben didn't find him until it was all over. He used to tell the story all the time, to everyone he met, about how Iron Man saved his life. Peter… he'd loved you before, but he worshipped you after. God, I don't think he took that helmet off for a week."

Tony rubs his eyes, trying to erase the picture she's painting from his eyelids, but there are very few things he remembers clearly from that night: fighting alongside Rhodey in that biosphere, kissing Pepper on a rooftop, and almost throwing up in his suit because he was about to witness some stupidly courageous child get killed and it was all his fault. Whenever he hits a low point, he thinks about that kid and how dangerous he is to the people around him. "Oh god," he breathes, but he's tipping over into hysterical now and it sounds like a half-choked sob. "Of course it was Peter."

"I'm not surprised he never told you."

Tony isn't, either. For all of Peter's misplaced hero worship, he clams up real tight whenever they unintentionally plunge below the surface of it. Perhaps that was a good thing.

"And I'm not telling you this to make you feel bad," May goes on, speaking right over his muttered 'too late' to make her point, "I'm telling you this to remind you that to a lot of people, you're a hero." Somehow, she doesn't sound as disgusted with the term as she normally does, and that alone leaves him reeling. "Even at your worst, you're someone's hero. You're Peter's hero. I know you've changed since then, I know you're trying, and you're doing your best, and that's great, but there's always going to be some little kid who wants to be just like you."

Some kid like Peter, who doesn't just want to be like Iron Man, but wants to be like _him_. This is not the first time he's thought about it (the so-called Ferry Incident is a waking _and_ sleeping nightmare), but it feels far more important hearing it from someone else, especially someone who knows Peter as well as she does.

"They shouldn't."

"But they will. Look, Tony, all I'm saying is that you can't stop yourself from being a role model, but you can control the kind of person they look up to. Peter's a very good judge of character, so you can't be that bad. If you act as even half the man he sees when he looks at you, there's hope for the future."

Except Peter idolizes him, even now. He looks at Tony like he hung he sun and makes trees grow and causes the Earth to turn, and no matter how hard he tries (and he's trying _so hard_ ), he will never be able to live up to that. The pressure of expectation encroaches on his already shoddy lung capacity the more he thinks about it. Sure, he's made an honest effort since the kid worked his way into his life to be less brash and irresponsible, to set a half-decent example, but is it enough? Will it ever be enough?

Probably not, but damn if he's not going to try.

"Try not to overthink it," she says, likely attempting to fill the resulting silence. "And get some sleep."

"Yeah," he breathes in response, staring blankly at the wall across from him knowing that sleep will elude him tonight. "You too."

"Goodnight, Tony."

"Night."

When the call clicks off, he sets the phone on the table and drops his head into his hands, forcing himself to breathe long and slow, but the picture behind his eyelids is a familiar little boy in a plastic Iron Man helmet standing in front of a literal killing machine. It always made him queasy before, but now that he's got a face to put on the anonymous kid, he's outright nauseous. Peter, with his big brown eyes and shaggy, curly hair. He's seen the pictures at the Parkers' apartment, seen the gap-toothed grin and the relentless joy. It could have ended that day, before he even left elementary school, before Tony even got to properly meet him.

He isn't sure how long he's been wallowing in the new information when his phone vibrating scares the life out of him.

 

 

 **May Parker** (12:38): [image]

 

 

Tony can't help but grin and set the image of Peter, sleep rumpled and wearing the Iron Man blanket like a cape, one eye barely cracked open and a dopey smile on his face, as his lock screen.

"FRIDAY, print a couple copies of this photo and order some frames to put them in."

**Author's Note:**

> tony: may may what is that blanket made out of  
> may: fleece??  
> tony: no its blackmail material
> 
>  
> 
> Y'all I have no self-control please enable me. I have 2 & a bit more written, and 1 half planned. If you have any ideas or any of their shirts you want to see, let me know! I'm more than happy to take requests. I haven't decided which one I'm going to do next, so I have no idea when that'll be out.


End file.
